ARK: Survival Evolved

It's been over a month since we launched Classic PvP and we've read a lot of feedback since launch! Today we'd like to announce upcoming changes for Classic PvP this week.

On Wednesday 4/24, Classic PvP will be merging all of the separated clusters into one large cluster. Our current Official PvP Network will remain unaffected. Tweaks to existing gameplay and the addition of removed content are still things that are under consideration.

Thank you for sharing your ideas and suggestions on Classic PvP! Let us know your thoughts!

Upcoming Patch This Wednesday!

We'd like to let survivors know that there is a patch coming down the pipeline this Wednesday to fix a couple of issues that popped up in the Eggcellent Adventure update. Here is a list of the changes coming on April 24th, 10am PST.

Turrets- Now ignore players using 'leavemealone' or 'enemyinvisible' admin cheats

Mantis- Fix for weapons not equipping properly

Social Roundup!

The Social Roundup[survivetheark.com] is a new addition that is geared to showing you some of the social activity you might be otherwise missing. Here we will highlight some of the posts that happened on our various social platforms. Topics might range from existing bugs to questions about events or future content.

Let us know here[survivetheark.com] if this is something you'd like to see more of, and we'll be sure to include more posts in future Community Crunches!

Game Suggestions!

Suggestions and feedback are very important for developing a healthy and successful game and we want to make sure we're seeing them all. Currently, there is a dedicated forum for Suggestions on our Community Forums[survivetheark.com], but well be turning that into something much more robust! Soon you will be able to submit feedback and upvote other ideas you would like to see in the game. This will allow us to easily see what things are getting the most attention.

We'll be looking to make this change to the Feedback forum tomorrow. Be on the lookout for the change and start getting your ideas in! We're excited to implement new ways to engage and hear your feedback.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkbI36KuazkBeginning tomorrow, Tuesday April 16th until April 30th, survivors will be able to experience our annual Eggcellent Adventure event! During Eggcellent Adventure, survivors will be able to collect special "Bunny Eggs" across the ARK from wild Bunny Dodo's. These Bunny Eggs can paint or used in special Cooking Pot recipes to craft new holiday-themed item skins the Marshmallow Dodo Hat and Chocolate Bunny Club, as well as returning skins: Bunny Ears, a Bunny Costume for the Procoptodon, Knitted Chick Hat, and Egg Shell Hat!

Bunny Oviraptor's will also drop festive Dino Candy this year. Collect the candy and feed it to your tames for a special festive effect! To top it all off, wild creatures roaming the ARKs will also find themselves feeling eggcellent, sporting bright colours of Green, Magenta, Yellow, and Blue!

Prim+- Fixed inability to craft Primitive+ specific resources in the forge- Fixed inability to harvest coal from obsidian- Fixed inability to harvest beeswax- Fixed problems with beehive functionality- Cauldron/Industrial Cooker can now craft new kibble- New kibble is now functional on dinos

Environment- Added bottom cap to mushroom trees on Aberration- Fixed Aberration Surface Damage gaps- Fixed issue with blue mushrooms not allowing Ankylo to harvest properly on Aberration- Moved 4 spawn points to be out of potential geo on The Island- Fixed location where player could become stuck on Extinction

C4- Can now place C4 near ORP protected structures, except near foundations

Dino Leash - Dino leashes no longer can be placed near enemy foundations

LOD iteration for- Basilisk- Flak Armor- Ghillie Armor

Egg Painting Contest!

After you've managed to hunt down a Bunny Dodo or Bunny Oviraptor and find yourself an egg, place the egg down on the ground and take out your paint brush and dyes. You'll be able to paint select regions on the egg as well as free-hand paint it with the brush to paint any design on it. Be creative!

There will be multiple competitions with a prize to the winner of $100!

- PC Egg Painting- Real-life Egg Painting

Players are expected to paint their own designs and downloading templates or images to use is not allowed.

In the real-life category, we're looking for you and your tribe mates to get together and paint some eggs in real life that somehow reflect the world of ARK! Screenshot or photo quality won't be taken into consideration but try to get a picture that best shows off your egg.

The entries will be judged by our community team. Submissions are limited to three eggs per survivor, so choose your best egg. You'll have the month of April to enter, with April 30th being the final day to enter. Submit your images in the thread linked below, and we look forward to seeing your creativity!

“Meshing” is the common term used to reference a variety of exploits in the game that involves going under terrain or behind walls to access unintended areas. While under the terrain, an exploiter may build bases, turrets, and a multitude of other things that prevent fair and fun gameplay for everyone. There are many ways that a player can access these areas but one of the easiest and most common are holes in the mesh itself. The term “collision” in games is what prevents players from being able to go through what would otherwise be hollow 3D objects. Some areas and objects have incorrect collision and provide easy access to areas behind terrain. Other cases of meshing can happen as a result of items in the game or the gameplay functionality they allow. Items like chairs, climbing picks, and platform saddles can be susceptible to exploits like meshing due to how they manipulate the player character.

Meshing has been a hot topic within the community for some time. Behind the scenes, we have been identifying these vulnerabilities by attacking them at different vantage points. Our ideal goal is to prevent players from getting into the mesh in the first place. We actively look for areas in maps where collision can be improved or tweaked to avoid the occurrence from someone purposefully or intentionally getting under the terrain. We are happy to report that this upcoming patch (patch number) has considerable improvements in this area. Since prevention is the preferred method to tackle meshing, bugs in items that allow players to access areas behind terrain are a priority for the gameplay team.

Players in unintended areas are in violation of our Code of Conduct and it is something we take very seriously. The Enforcement Team has employed the use of new data and metrics in an effort to combat meshing and investigate each case thoroughly. In many cases, they are preventing minor issues from becoming substantial ones. The mesh detection tool has provided the Enforcement Team with new data that enables them to act quickly and efficiently. If the mesh detection tool becomes more refined, we plan to integrate it on other platforms (like console) to reduce meshing exploits in a more automated fashion. The Enforcement Team has seen a noticeable drop in reports related to meshing because of these implementations and we feel we are making positive strides towards eliminating this issue as a whole.

If you are aware of meshing or exploits that are happening on PC, please report them here by selecting Report Abuse and filling out a quick report:

We will continue to keep you updated with any significant advancements on the topic. It is and has always been, an important topic for us.

Update on Recent Lost Characters...

Please see our recent announcement if you were affected by the recent rollback that occurred on the Official Server Network. If you have not submitted your ticket yet, please do so here. The Customer Service team is still actively working through tickets.

Last week, in conjunction with Snail Games, we announced a new game mode called “Classic PvP” as an exciting large-team competitive experience for ARK. As a studio, we want to explore fun, new ideas and we believe large group PvP has a lot of undiscovered potential. With Classic PvP we'll be looking for your help to suggest balance changes throughout the seasons, while we strive to make this mode fun and competitive for everyone. Over time, as the game mode receives its adjustments and tweaks, we will be connecting the isolated clusters to each other so that they form a more extensive network.

Although Aberration and Extinction aren’t available in Classic PvP, the development team is actively looking for opportunities to re-include the content into the mix with balance changes that are in line with the new Classic PvP game mode. While we hope to re-add this content to expand on Classic PvP, there is no specific timeline or timing on this.

The Classic PvP game mode will also serve as a test for new experiences to come, and we’re excited for all the possibilities it can lead to. To start, we'll be working with the community to actively seek out tribes and tribe leaders to be representatives in a new type of broadcasted competitive Classic PvP event. These representatives may be sponsored; therefore they must ensure that they’re upholding fundamental values within their tribe which promote clean and fair play. By doing so, they'll be playing a significant role in expanding ARK’s competitive PvP gameplay and helping us shape the future of large group PvP.

Look out for the launch of our Classic PvP servers tomorrow at 10 AM PST!

Last week it was made very clear by the community that meshing remains a critical issue in ARK. Without going into extreme technical detail, it is complicated to show our internal efforts to combat meshing, which is something we have continually been working on. Since it is such a hot topic, ARK developers have been more vocal on social media about ways we've tried to detect and circumvent those who do mesh. If it's one thing we know - players are ingenious and creative, which extends into how they approach meshing, and exploiting the game at large. Giving up too much of the internal working of changes we have made and continue to work on would compromise these efforts. With that said, here's what can be said definitively:

- We'll make an effort at being more transparent about what we’re doing in regards to preventing undermeshing partly by calling them out in the patch notes going forward- We are actively seeking out people who use mesh exploits and banning them

As you might imagine, crafting a solution that handles all cases of meshing on all of our maps is challenging. Beyond fixing the sources of meshing, we're continually refining the methods we use to detect players under the mesh. We've made significant strides in this area recently by developing an approach that lets us know sooner than ever if someone is where they shouldn't be, which enables our Enforcement team to take action more quickly. We started issuing bans based on this new method on Friday and will continue to issue bans against anyone who intentionally meshes and exploits the game.

ARK: Eggcellent Adventure 4 Coming!

You’ve guessed it, Eggcellent Adventure is back later this month! And to encourage everyone to get into the festive spirit, we’ll be holding our egg painting competition again this year.

During the event: after you've managed to hunt down a Bunny Dodo or Bunny Oviraptor and find yourself an egg, place the egg down on the ground and take out your paint brush and dyes. You'll be able to paint select regions on the egg as well as free-hand paint it with the brush to paint any design on it. Be creative!

There will be multiple competitions with a prize to the winner of $100!

- PC Egg Painting- Real-life Egg Painting

Players are expected to paint their own designs and downloading templates or images to use is not allowed.

In the real-life category, we're looking for you and your tribe mates to get together and paint some eggs in real life that somehow reflect the world of ARK! Screenshot or photo quality won't be taken into consideration but try to get a picture that best shows off your egg.

The entries will be judged by our community team. Submissions are limited to three eggs per survivor, so choose your best egg! You'll have the month of April to enter! Submit them in the provided thread later this month when the in-game event begins, and we'll pick a winner at the end of the month!

Conquest Server Backups!

Along with the closure of the Conquest servers, we’ve made backups of these server saves available at the link below for any players who wish to maintain their progress on their server.

https://youtu.be/VdXku3-sxi4It's finally arrived! We're beyond thrilled to be releasing Structure Plus (S+) and the long-awaited kibble rework (now packaged together as 'Homestead') to all of our survivors March 5th 2019!

If you can dream it, you can build it! Homestead includes the major elements of Structures Plus (S+), a player created Sponsored Mod by Orionsun. S+ has maintained a large following of users over an extended period of time, and its move to console has long been requested. We are particularly excited to finally be able to share this with our console survivors who will be using it for the very first time.

Along-side the update to structures we also have our kibble rework included in this patch! Previously the Kibble system worked like a tree, the egg of one creature being used in a kibble to tame the next creature in line. Often these kibbles didn’t make sense in terms of game progression and became more redundant with each new creature that was added to the game. Each creature now falls into one of six categories, and that creature’s egg can be used to tame any creature within that specific category. Instead of having 50+ different kibbles all requiring a different specific egg, it is drastically reduced to: Basic, Simple, Regular, Superior, Exceptional, and Extraordinary kibbles!

You can expect the Homestead update to hit your respective platform around 10am PST tomorrow starting with PC and concluding with PS4. We invite you to watch our Homestead trailer to see a preview of the variety of structures that are now possible. All of the builds featured in the trailer are player-created and you can find links to how to build the structures in the video description. It has been an amazing experience for us to see our dedicated players create things we could have never imagined!

We hope these changes to ARK inspire survivors to turn their wooden shack on the beach into the fortress of their dreams!

Homestead patch notes:

S+Variant System- Added Structure variant system to cycle visuals for a structure

Managarmr- Fixed issue with Managarmr breath causing flyers to teleport- Fixed Managarmr's forward dash not triggering consistently when spamming it- When Managarmr freezes a dino with a rider, the rider will no longer be dismounted but rather frozen for 1 second- Character frozen visual effect should change more smoothly- A player frozen either standing, crouching, or prone can no longer change that state- Duration of frozen for player characters is now a function of health and armor rating- Duration of frozen for player characters is significantly reduced overall- Cheat spawning a dino should no longer cause you to get stuck on that dino - if it dies while being frozen by Managarmar Ice breath- Reduced Managarmr ice breath damage ~25%- Added new freeze immune icon

Environments- Fixed buildable space outside of bounds- Fixed multiple holes and meshing locations- Moved Desert Titan player spawn point to an area inside the structure prevention zone- Fixed climbable trees in Extinction

Kairuku- Base affinity increased by 30% now that it has a preferred kibble

Tomorrow at 1 PM Pacific Time (March 5th), members of the ARK development team will be hosting a Developer Livestream on our Twitch channel![www.twitch.tv]

Our Community-focused livestreams went over well with the community so we decided to restructure slightly to bring even more members of our team into the mix! We invite you to join us from our Seattle office as we discuss the latest developments with ARK.

In this stream we will be showcasing and discussing our biggest addition and change to the game: the Structures Plus and Kibble rework.

We'll also be answering questions from you--the community--in a live form Digest. We invite you to leave your ARK or development related questions in the comment section below and we will be selecting an assortment of your questions to answer live on stream.

We're bringing in two new projects to the Sponsored Mod Program this month, and don't forget that we have already started another round of applications for the sponsored mod program. You'll be able to submit an application until April 5th. So polish up those design documents and send them in. We love seeing the amazing projects everyone is working on.

First up we have Additional Lighting by ReinerSCT. This mod adds a plethora of new lighting options of different colors, styles, and configurations. Ever wanted to make your own disco room, or set up a complex lighting system for your over-the-top castle? This mod will let you do it!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1380777369We're also happy to bring in the Play as Dino mod by Finntastic. Does anybody else ever use the old mantra "Don't just hunt the raptor... Be the raptor"? No? Just me? Either way, with this mod you can! The author has a lot of cool systems being worked on for this mod and we're happy to provide some support for them.

At 1 PM Pacific Time on March 5th, members of the ARK development team will be hosting a Developer Livestream on our Twitch channel![www.twitch.tv]

Our Community-focused livestreams went over well with the community so we decided to restructure slightly to bring even more members of our team into the mix! We invite you to join us from our Seattle office as we discuss the latest developments with ARK.

In next weeks' stream we will be showcasing and discussing our biggest addition and change to the game: the Structures Plus and Kibble rework.

We'll also be allowing questions from you--the community--in a live form Digest. We invite you to leave your ARK or development related questions in the comment section below and we will be selecting an assortment of your questions to answer live on stream.

This week is the final week to participate in the open Structures Plus and Kibble Rework beta before the testing period closes to the public. If you have not tried it out and/or given your feedback regarding the changes we invite you to do so! Please check out the post below for all of the information on how you can get involved in play testing this beta.

Get your mods ready, sponsorship program applications open again on Friday! We will also be announcing a couple of new sponsored projects next week!

We're making some adjustments to what has been our focus for sponsored projects. Going forward we will be looking at more small scope projects as well, instead of only the large scope projects like we have been up to this point. A result of this adjustment is that you will begin to see more projects with shorter-term sponsorship's making their way into the program and, by proxy, a somewhat higher rotation rate leading to more opportunities.

We want to encourage everyone, no matter the scale of your projects, to apply for sponsorship during each application period. Even if a project isn't selected during a given application period it helps me to keep a finger on the pulse of everyone that's interested in being sponsored and seeing how your projects and plans develop.